Yesterday was day 3 in Oxford, and the day I went into the MRI machine. They put me in scrubs and then I was fitted with some MRI safe glasses to my approximate prescription, and some earplugs. MRI machines are loud and they were very careful to make sure that the earplugs were snug enough that I wouldn't have my hearing damaged by the loud noises. This took some doing, as my right ear is not good at keeping things in it, but eventually the radiographer managed to wedge a lump of wax in there hard enough that it stayed put.

Then I was wedged into the machine itself, with a SpO2 measuring clip on my left middle finger and a squeezy alert bulb in my right hand, to squeeze if I panicked, or the machine got too loud, or basically anything. Under the fingers of my right hand were buttons to press to respond to computer tasks. A mirror above my head reflected a screen at the far end of the tube, which had instructions on it telling me what to do.

The first task was recalling various memories, good, neutral, and negative, so they could see what my brain did while I was doing this. After that there was a task where I had to select the "better" one of two symbols to win money, but there were no clues given as to what was better. I guess they wanted to see how my brain made decisions where there was a risk or reward at stake.

Being in the MRI was rather nice actually. Not too loud with the earplugs in. It just made random beepy buzzy noises while I got engrossed in the tasks I was being told to do in the screen. Really the only bad thing about it was that after 45 minutes or however long it was my neck really ached!

9/10 would have my hydrogen nuclei resonated again.